Monthly Archives: April 2013

I find myself in the delightful situation of having no particular due dates and about a zillion possible choices of what to work on next. Do I pick the biopunk? Or the low-magic fantasy with the political intrigue? The contemporary rockstar fantasy? The steampunk bunny that latched onto my brain today? (Thanks Babi, I’ll get you for that!)

One thing for sure, the second book in the Bite Me series needs to be written. I mean, how can you resist stuff like this:

Bryan held the two by four up to the side of the table so Levi could nail it in place. “So, when are you going to tell him?”

“Tell him what?” Levi asked around the nails in his mouth. He knocked each nail in with one smooth stroke apiece. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Glyn watching him from his perch at the bar, where he was slicing limes for the evening. He smiled and turned a little, so Glyn had a better of view of his biceps flexing in the worn t-shirt.

Bryan looked over at him, obviously uncertain how to proceed. “He’s not normal, Levi. Since when does a werewolf talk to the wolves inside us?”

“Whatever he’s become since I bit him, he’s still a witch, Bryan. He’s not going to be a normal wolf. Better just get used to it.” Should dig out the toolbelt and do some work around the house tonight. Not that he expected to get much done once Glyn saw the toolbelt. Levi wasn’t the only with ingrained responses. Pavlov’s witch, ha ha.

These two make me laugh. And, for all the sniping they do, they have a very respectful relationship, as you will see while the story progresses.

Don’t forget to check out Goodreads! I need to make one quick adjustment to my cover, and then I think I’m going to post it over there. Two of the stories have already been released early, with more promised if we can get 95 more people to join. So, quick, go join the group! And Jack is posting about William–yum!

I was really shocked today to realise how tense I’ve been over the past month. When I looked back in the spreadsheet, most of April was spent on edits, some of them fairly substantial, as I filled in plot holes and rewrote sections that weren’t doing their jobs properly. The knots in my shoulders are still there, and probably will be for a few more days, but the searing pain and the headache are mostly gone now. This is something, obviously, that I will have to plan for in the future–I did the same thing with Bite Me Tender, but it wasn’t so bad since BMT is about a thirds the length of Knight.

Speaking of BMT, I’m being torn in two directions with that little series. I have the first 2500 words or so of the next one written, but the scene where Glyn and Levi first meet walked in, sat down and put its feet up on the table today. While I was in the shower. And no, I didn’t feel ogled at all, until Glyn’s dad decided to add his two cents worth. If eyes were octopi, that’s what it felt like. So I’ll be setting up a third planner in that binder in Liquid Story Binder, to keep these little ideas alive. And, I have to say, Glyn was kind of an ass in those days. But so was Levi. Ah, heck, they both still are. At least Levi looks trainable–I’m not sure I could say that about Glyn.

So, here’s my wordcounts, for both March and April. Thank you for helping keep me honest. There’s days I might not write, if it wasn’t for the end of month confessional. 😛

March:

April:

See all the gray? That’s editing, if there’s a number in there. If it’s empty, that’s a day I didn’t write, for whatever reason. Sometimes, just because I’m too darn tired. The occassional recharge seems to be a necessity, no matter how much I feel like I’m wasting the time.

Must go, laundry to fold, old episodes of MASH to watch. Man, I love that show. What a bunch of people just like the people I hang out with!

And immediately started panicking about whether I should have waited another day to send it off. I probably would have changed a few more things, added a few sentences, took a few more out. At this point, though, I’m not sure I wouldn’t do more harm than good. Anyway, Knight is now officially off my plate and onto someone else’s.

Time to finish the poppy boys and see what other tales I can tell. Courtesans, cyborgs, soldiers, werewolves and sorcerers. And more squirrels.

Like this:

I love Friday. Today, I labelled organic meat for sale. It was a fun time-they’re a crazy crew out at the meat shop where we cut and package our meat to sell.

What else did I do today? I posted on Goodreads. Another interview with the poppy boys and another little snippet.

I haven’t done any work on Knight yet today, but I may later. Or maybe a few more words on the poppy boys. I’m really excited to be hitting send very soon on Knight, but it leaves me in something of a quandry, because I really don’t have any stories jockeying for position right now. I may take a few days off and read, just to see if any of them take advantage and slip into the ‘next-in-line’ space. To be honest, the story of what happened before The Courtesy of Knives has been nagging me heavily the last week. It wants to call itself Bird of Paradise, or some form of that, which usually means that there’s a full-fledged story hiding in my subconscious somewhere. Come out, you! We don’t stand for closets around here! The social structure of this society is fascinating and weird and leaves lots of room for UST and sexy scenes. Plus a very scary few as well. We’ll see how it goes…

Hubs and I had quite the conversation about this, this morning. Especially interesting, since he’s a white, heterosexual male and we live in the small community where he grew up. That’s not to say he enjoys all the privilege possible–he grew up quite poor, and the son of a European immigrant. But, he’s still got more than I do–a white, heterosexual female, who did not grow up in his small, somewhat hidebound community. Not that this means I can fully understand the experience of a black lesbian. It does mean that I can use my writer’s imagination to extrapolate to what that must be like, and probably only fall a couple of kilometres short of the real experience. My own opinion–I think everyone should have to go someplace, live somewhere, where their natural privilege doesn’t exist. We should all have that experience at least once in our lives. I think it would make us much less cruel, in the end. Anyway, read Scalzi’s blog, click on the link and read the story about the teaching exercise. In today’s gamer generation, it really makes sense.

Synopsis done, query mostly done, final draft waiting on a final readthrough to catch an dropped words or weird grammar. It’s almost done–hooray!

This is interesting: Writer and teacher Samantha Allen assigns my “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is” piece in her Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 100 class (along with her own, similar article) and then as a teaching exercise runs her students through Halo, with the game set at varying difficulties, to see if a video game can actually be a useful teaching tool with regard to discussing privilege and intersectionality.

Sorry about the lateness–problems with my DNS and I couldn’t get out onto the internet at all. Just over halfway through the synopsis of Knight and dying of boredom. The story that the betas forgot they were supposed to be betaing, in synopsis form, could be used as a lethal weapon of mass boredom. Hope the editors have lots of coffee on hand the day it lands on their desk.

I just signed the contract with Storm Moon Press for Nuts About You to appear in their Forgotten Menagerie anthology, so I thought I’d celebrate by posting a little squirrel sleaze for your delectation tonight.

Vince was stroking himself now, the sponge all but forgotten in his other hand. He grimaced and braced the hand with the sponge against the wall above the window. Nathan watched, mesmerized, as Vince trailed his hand up and down his shaft, palm caressing the length while his fingertips tapped and squeezed the head. He reached down to cup his balls and did something there that made him throw his head back, mouth open in a moan that Nathan could only imagine. He found his own furry paw heading south, as if it and his cock had minds of their own and were conspiring together. Nathan shook his head and pulled his paw back. It might be called ‘spanking the monkey’, but animal form was not the one to be doing it in. Claws. Instead, he gripped his tail tight and leaned further out to get a better view.

Which is when his paw slipped and he found himself plummeting to the ground. No! I’m going to miss the best part! He landed hard, momentarily breathless, but shook it off and dashed for the trunk of the tree again. In a desperate hurry, he scrambled along the branch and down onto the feeder again. A nearby starling squawked and laughed at him, but he only had time to give it a furry fingered salute before scampering around the side of the feeder to the end facing the house again. Oh, please don’t let him be finished…

They asked for dragons and gryphons. I gave them a squirrel. ‘Cause I’m just contrary like that. 😛

Kitty, can’t look at peanut butter any more (and if you want to know why, you have to buy the antho!)

I’m pretty sure the edits are done on Knight. I’m halfway through the synopsis and more than halfway to being bald. How on earth do you condense 95,000 words down to 1500? Without sounding like a moron? By the time I’m done cutting out every word I can think of, it’s going to sound like caveman grunts and worm farts. 😀 Yeah, I’m just that classy.

Sign of Spring’s been put on hold all weekend, while I worked through the last of my feedback on Knight and started working on the synopsis. I’m going to give Knight a break tomorrow, and give myself permission to ‘play’ with my poppy boys. (Oh, get your mind out of the gutter! No, wait, that’s where I live. Come back here!) Hope to get them into the flower garden tomorrow, plus I have to interview them again for the Threadhop. And work on their cover.